THE WOMEN’S ENGLAND FOOTBALL TEAM HAS ABANDONNED ‘TAKING THE KNEE’. IT’S TO BE WELCOMED, NOT LEAST FOR THOSE WITH A GENUINE INTEREST IN FIGHTING RACISM, ARGUES DAN MCNAY
Discussions and disagreements over the act of ‘taking the knee’ at sporting events can feel like an old and worn-out topic. In male sport, the gesture has largely been disposed of, apart from infrequent appearances for the sake of appearances. In the women’s game, however, it has always been far more prominent. This is to be expected. After all, women’s sport by its very nature is a component of the wider national social justice campaign, so it makes sense that other social justice matters would be passionately propagated from within it.
With this being so, the recent development within the women’s England national football team is noteworthy, and also incredibly welcome. The development being that, finally, after years of ‘taking the knee’, the decision was made last month to drop the gesture, while still keeping the message of rejecting discrimination alive and well.
Before we wonder why the gesture was dropped, it is wise to fully understand what the gesture is. When we look at what the gesture is, where it originated from and what it became, there should be no surprise in the levels of controversy it generated, or the lack of usefulness the gesture provided.
To some, taking the knee is a brave and noble statement. To many, it was an ineffective, ostentatious Americanism, strongly linked to the extreme left of the political spectrum. Ineffective because watching celebrities self-righteously kneeling for a few seconds could never and would never convert life-long racists into changing their views. Ostentatious because the only powerful emotions the act encouraged were feelings of importance, heroism and bravery from within the person kneeling. An Americanism because it was first done by an American, during an American sport, to draw attention to an American incident in an American city. It’s strongly linked to the extreme left for numerous reasons. One reason being that the American who started the trend is a hard-line and passionate Marxist. Another is because the act of kneeling quickly became synonymous with BLM, a proud and vocal Marxist organisation founded and run by vocal and proud self-identified Marxists. A further reason simply became the unavoidable fact that almost every self-declared socialist or progressivist on social media defended the gesture with emphatic fanaticism, and often, close to mindless fury.
It seemed the UK, perhaps even more than the US, pledged loyalty to the gesture and the group it was linked to. It reached the point where, during the men’s football World Cup, the England national team was the only team making the gesture. Even the US had stopped. This should surely have been a clue, a sign to allow the defenders of the gesture to realise that it was in fact the act of kneeling which was odd and old-fashioned, as opposed to the act of not doing so.
Sadly, supporters began having misguided discussions between themselves, with regards to why these other countries would not take the ‘enlightened’ advice of the progressivist anglosphere and ‘take the knee’. Perhaps their societies were so bigoted that they would never accept their players kneeling, was one viewpoint. Another equally wide of the mark interpretation was that perhaps they did not need to kneel, because their countries were utopias, and it was only the UK which suffered from racism. The true reason was overlooked. This being that they were simply athletes who had turned up with the intention to play a game of football, as opposed to partaking in gesture-politics.
That in itself was the problem. Politics, extreme politics, what used to be fringe politics, had taken over mainstream media and sport. Eventually, the media did get wise to the true nature of BLM, and we eventually stopped hearing sports commentators using the phrase; ‘and the players take the knee to show their support for Black Lives Matter’. Unfortunately, the damage was done. Everyone associated the gesture with the extremist group. True, stadiums had finally taken down their incredibly large BLM flags and players no longer wore BLM shirts on the pitch before kick-off, but the association was there. The fact that on BLM marches, their supporters frequently ‘took the knee’, only solidified the accurate association.
Despite all this, supporters of kneeling, people who almost certainly were not left-wing extremists, but merely naïve liberals, continued to defend the gesture. They would do so with infantile and stubborn remarks such as; ‘the fact people oppose kneeling shows the reason we need to kneel more’.
This logic would only be apt if the opponents of kneeling opposed the well-meaning message the kneelers believed they were pushing. That being strong opposition to racism. But the opponents of kneeling have never opposed the message. They oppose the gesture, due to its links to the Marxist BLM group. What occurs as a result is countless non-racist pro-kneeling Marxists arguing intensely with countless non-racist anti-Marxists. During these pointless arguments about a gesture, the entire wider point is lost. As thousands of non-racists argued with thousands of other non-racists about a simple ineffective gesture, zero progress was made with regards to social justice.
In fact, the opposite occurred. All kneeling has done is create a wall between different well-meaning sections of society. It has fanned the flames of frustration and anger. Stubbornness prevailed more than anything. For most critics of the gesture, if the gesture was simply changed, the arguments would have ended. If the kneelers switched to an equally simple gesture, yet one with zero links to groups like BLM, the problem could have ended. Something as equally simply and random as standing on one leg would have sufficed. Nevertheless, kneelers stuck to kneeling, and did so mainly to frustrate and rub it in the faces of their critics. This became the main aim, and targeting racism became a secondary, even tertiary motivation. Ultimately, we went backwards in the fight against bigotry, and turned on each other instead.
Nevertheless, things appear to be changing. The women, far from clinging to the gesture which has been largely ignored by the men, now seem to have overtaken their male counterparts. This is because they haven’t simply not chosen to kneel. They have specifically chosen not to kneel. These two decisions may sound interchangeable, but the latter is far more powerful. Not content with quietly stopping the gesture and hoping no one questions them, as happened in the male game, the women have realised that the gesture is ineffective and controversial. As a result, they have chosen to openly reject it.
By doing this, they are offering an olive branch to anti-kneelers who also abhor racism. They are offering unity. This offer is one that may have been difficult to make, since no one enjoys the feeling of backtracking. This being so, the move has been made by the kneelers, and so the obligation of the anti-kneelers to now join with their former opponents is very real. After all, racism does still exist, albeit in a greatly diminished form, compared to decades gone by. With the Marxist element of the fight against racism now apparently made irrelevant, perhaps now society can give that one last great push. The one needed to drive the last remanets of both right-wing and left-wing hatred from our beautiful game.
To see the England team standing together, instead of kneeling, was surely a welcome sight for England fans. Solidarity, togetherness, but through strength and positivity. No need for acts of contrition or submission. No more kneeling for fear of being chastised by an angry mob. No more acting like Americans while representing England. Just a bunch of people from a variety of backgrounds coming together to lead a patriotic charge to victory.
Moreover, with the absence of kneeling surely comes the absence of the arguments about kneeling. With the unhelpful wall torn down, with the pointless distraction eradicated, progress can finally be made. Genuine progress, the kind of progress despised by most progressivists. Of course, it is true that the pendulum could swing, and we could all be subjected to consistently watching the dreaded gesture on our screens again in a matter of weeks or even days, but hopefully not. Hopefully now, as a nation, we can forget about skin-colour and political gestures. Hopefully now we can unite and focus on making England successful on the football pitch again, while simultaneously reminding the world and each other that Great Britain truly is one of the best places to think, speak and live freely.
